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Another approach would be to model the "I haven't been to the portal recently" and "I've been to the portal recently" experiences as two different guest users. Again, you'd need to gate among these users via examination of that cookie. Gating could be accomplished by a filter. Requests passing through the Login servlet could be shunted based on the cookie if the cookie were considered an authentication credential to authenticate the user as one or another of some very soft, non-preference-modifying users.
Related information
- Unlicensed user Andrew Petro gave a presentation at JA-SIG Atlanta 2006 on the topic of compelling unauthenticated uPortal user experiences covering some loosely related ideas.